Week 3 focused on the formation of stars and icons analyzing their similarities and their differences, while focusing on Marlene Dietrich. Nowadays when we hear the world icon, we assume it’s taking about an application on our phones right? Well, icons are much more than that.

Icons are considered the faces we see in Hollywood that are immediately recognizable. In my opinion Dwayne “The Rock “Johnson would be considered an icon because he not only plays in a lot of films, but he is also a former athlete who is known around the world. In many ways Marlene Dietrich can be considered an icon as well not only for her film work, but for the women she empowered at the time. It can be argued that she laid down the foundation for stars such as Marilyn Monroe because of how similar they are as stars. In the films I seen of Marlene Dietrich she came off has a woman of power. It seemed to me that she could control a room simply by the faces she made. Marilyn Monroe shared some of these features, but she didn’t seem as powerful. Monroe would control a room with her beauty & her electric personality. This leads me to my next question, how are stars even made?

There are many aspects to the formation of a star in Hollywood. One aspect that stood out to me the most in the formation of stars is how Hollywood can control what kind of media is being put out about a star. For example, if a star has a big role in a film that is coming up and the character being played by that star is very humble and innocent, Hollywood would publish things about the star that would line up with the role they are about to play. They did this not only to make the star and the company look good, but in hopes to increase ticket sales for the film. Being that media wasn’t as prominent as it is now it was harder for fans to connect with stars. Therefore, the media pieces that were put out were the only glimpse into the lives of stars fans actually got.

Star vehicles are very important when thinking about how stars are made. Star vehicles in shorter terms are films written for a specific star to basically take it and run with it. This is more so seen in films where it is the star’s first big time role in a film. The most real-world example of this I could think of relates to sports. If a basketball coach ran his team through one-star player and gave that star the power to do what they wanted as long as the team wins. More specifically this was the case with Michael Jordan, he had his way with the Bulls and won multiple NBA championships.

The formation of stars is very fascinating because all stars have a different path to stardom but they all have one goal, become an icon.